ENTRY ARCHIVE

Thursday, September 9, 2010

POSSIBLE PROJECT/S?

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1.

I have been absent for some days now. I have been taking a rest since completing the MINICONCEPTDOCS series. During that time I have been compiling the MCD DVD that I will be giving to all those that were kind enough to collaborate on the series.

I am really liking the design of the DVD. I feel it's the best 2D design work I have ever done... which isn't saying much, but I am happy with it.

2.

I think I am going to use this space for a while to comment on something that I think a lot about: The representation of the "real world" within motion pictures.

I want to really get at Reality Television... REALLY.

What does reality television mean today? It certainly doesn't have any relationship to reality, does it? Can it?

Please bare with me as I enter in a free-writing, stream-of-consciousness process for a few moments. Maybe something will come of it.

I want to collect reality, my reality. I want to see if can be yours too. Maybe for split seconds at a time it can be... Or maybe it can never be. Let's see. See, hear, feel, think, move. I want to see if the most seemingly banal images can do this. Be lasting.

Now I want to handle motion pictures in the same way. Free, streaming, real.

3.

Consider this exploratory surgery. I'm slicing, digging in to see if there's anything there.

I want to tell a history of America. One that is a history of "you".

I'm not even sure this footage makes sense, but I wanted to see how the techniques I would use to tell this history would look together, contiguous.

I want to use the records of ordinary people, people that could be, have been, will be those names that have transcended time: Edison, Ali, King, Kennedy, Whitman, O'Connor...

Don't we all start in the same place? Don't we all "make" America?

I guess that's my goal.

Everyone has contributed to this history and I want to capture a small part of it.

1 comment:

The footage is visually interesting and flows nicely. The music, as always, appropriately matched. I look forward to more as you flesh this out, Bobby.

Regarding Reality TV, I know I'm not the first to point out that it has always been miscalled such... and I'm not necessarily trying to beat that drum. It's Spectacle TV. Stranger and falser than fiction, replete with petulant micro-celebrities, out-sized emotions and manipulative handling by those presenting it. I guess if you want an honest look at American culture, its worth exploring as its popularity speaks for itself, but... ewwwww.

P.S. Nice footage of Bair. I didn't think he'd show up on film, being undead and all.

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About Me

Robert A. Emmons Jr. is a digital documentary filmmaker. His films include Enthusiast, Wolf at the Door, YARDSALE!, Goodwill, and De Luxe. Goodwill screened as part of the Smithsonian exhibition: Our Journeys/Our Stories: Portraits of Latino Achievement at the NJ Historical Society and won Best Homegrown Documentary at the 2008 Garden State Film Festival. In 2009 he received Mexico’s Lindbergh-Carranza International Goodwill Award as a Messenger of Peace for his work on Goodwill. From Feb. to Aug. of 2010 Emmons created two short docs a week. The 52 short docs formed the weekly internet series MINICONCEPTDOCS. His scholarly work focuses on media, documentary, and comic books and includes Who's Responsible Here? Media, Audience, and Ethics (Cognella 2009), The Encyclopedia of Documentary Film (Routledge, 2005), Small Tech: The Culture of Digital Tools (Univ. of Minn. 2007), and The Encyclopedia of Latino and Latina History (Facts on File, TBP). Emmons teaches media courses at Rutgers University-Camden where he is also the Associate Director of the Honors College. He is currently working on a new documentary about Fredric Wertham and comics in the 50’s called Diagram for Delinquents.